Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Intuit Women in Engineering: Using AI & Data to Help Small Businesses When They Need It Most

Powering prosperity around the world isn’t just a lofty goal—it’s the daily work of applying AI and data to help people manage their financial lives through good times and bad. For Nhung Ho, Director of Data Science, Small Business and Self-Employed Group, that impact is highly relatable. She’s one of ten siblings and five are small business owners! So when

Written by Intuit Blog team
Published Jun 23, 2021 - [Updated Nov 9, 2022]
2 min read

Powering prosperity around the world isn’t just a lofty goal—it’s the daily work of applying AI and data to help people manage their financial lives through good times and bad. For Nhung Ho, Director of Data Science, Small Business and Self-Employed Group , that impact is highly relatable. She’s one of ten siblings and five are small business owners! So when plummeting revenue made cash flow an urgent matter for Intuit customers, her team got to work.

On International Women in Engineering Day, we celebrate the contributions of technologists who are doing their part to #ShapeTheWorld they want to see. This is one such story of an Intuit data scientist whose team is making a difference for small business owners when they need it most.

“When the (global pandemic) shutdown happened, revenue dropped 99 percent for some of our small business customers, almost overnight. This was a massive global event that everybody was feeling simultaneously. And we said, ‘We have to do something for our small businesses,’ because this was not only such a scary time for them, but also a huge time of uncertainty for everyone around the world.”

– Nhung Ho, Director of Data Science, Intuit

In a wide-ranging conversation with Practical AI podcast hosts on Data Science for Intuitive User Experiences, Ho describes how she and her team set out to help small businesses build resiliency in the midst of the 2020 global pandemic and economic crisis. For example, with historical cash flow trends clearly of little use in light of such a dramatic recent shift, a new approach was needed to give small business owners a better understanding of their income and expenses—especially in the face of unforeseen circumstances. That meant building models robust enough to hold up in a once-in-a-generation event.

You can hear more about Ho’s collaborative approach across teams to solve big problems for small businesses through intuitive customer experiences in the Practical AI podcast here.